Most Significant Development: #MeToo
“The Weinstein scandal was a major domino in what has since become a long-overdue shift. Its industry-wide ramifications, while occasionally difficult to deal with, are a necessary redistribution of power within Hollywood. The ripple effects, however, will be global. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Nocturama“Vastly misunderstood by a majority of critics and audience alike, seen, analyzed, and rejected in the context of the November Paris attack instead of a representation of a distorted end of an era of contemporary youth and its mal-être.”

Best Repertory Series: “Emotion Pictures: International Melodrama” at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
“For its scope and diversity of the representation of cinema.”

Best Undistributed Film:Spoor“Agnieszka Holland gets more untamed with age; a wild, shape-shifting and genre-crossing ride.”

Best First Feature:Get Out

Best Documentary:Dawson City: Frozen Time

Best Animated Feature:Coco

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Good Time“Yes, Pattinson was very good, but the critics wildly overrated this posturing fetishization of low-life New York, mistaking grime for authenticity. That overwhelming soundtrack didn’t help.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The downfall of Harvey Weinstein, and the roar of women’s pissed-off voices.

Best Undistributed Film:A Dragon Arrives!“I’m still not exactly sure what it’s all about (which, I confess, is one reason my mind keeps returning to it), but I love the mystery and the cinematic prism that filmmaker Mani Haghighi puts the story through.”

Best First Feature:Lady Bird

Best Documentary: N/A

Best Animated Feature: N/A

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:The Square“Ruben Östlund’s satire of art world and society culture pretensions is fun and funny, but really doesn’t cut very deeply beneath the surface of its attack.”

Best Undistributed Film: Flames
“This fusion of documentary and romance, which I saw at Tribeca and have heard hide nor hair of since, is a raw, candid, and uncomfortably personal piece of work.”

Best First Feature: Lucky

Best Documentary: The Work

Best Animated Feature:The LEGO Batman Movie

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Wonderstruck
“I mean, not everybody was wrong. But it was surprising to see a movie that emotionally wrecked me get the finger from so many critics I usually trust.”

Best Repertory Series: “The Shadow Cinema of the American ’70s” at Quad Cinema
“The Quad’s companion series to Charles Taylor’s excellent book Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You gave me my first-ever peek at gems like Cisco Pike, Hard Times, Prime Cut, and (in glorious 16mm) too-rare screenings of Citizens Band (Handle With Care)and American Hot Wax.

Most Significant Development: The necessity of holding two ideas at once w/r/t Netflix
“On one hand, hardly anyone is spending coin like theirs on either festival acquisitions or production of risky original work. And on the other hand, debuting a movie on Netflix is, in most cases, like sending it into the Bermuda Triangle on a twig raft. (And on the third hand: Bright?!?!)”

Best Undistributed Film: Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming
“Ann Marie Fleming’s story of young poet Rosie Ming (voiced brilliantly by Sandra Oh) is like an animated Paterson.”

Best First Feature: Loving Vincent

Best Documentary: Faces Places

Best Animated Feature:Loving Vincent

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Call Me by Your Name
“Dull, derivative, and, as Richard Brody put it in the New Yorker, it’s essentially just a treatise on good parenting. Then there’s writing that should be nominated for the cinematic equivalent of Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. ‘You’ve moved on to the plant kingdom, now? What’s next, minerals? You’re done with the animal kingdom. You know that’s me, right?’ ‘I’m sick, aren’t I?’ ‘I wish everyone were as sick as you.’ And people think the Star Wars prequels have bad dialogue?”

Best Repertory Series: “Early Wiseman” at Film Forum
“There will likely be another Wiseman festival at the iconic Manhattan cinema in 2018. If that happens, seize that opportunity! These films demand to be seen on big screens without interruption — as taxing on the posterior as Wiseman’s lengthy runtimes can be.”

Most Significant Development: The #MeToo Movement
“It was in Hollywood where it all began. The victims who came forward to reveal the abuse they suffered at the hands of powerful men in the film and television industry started an infinitely long-overdue cultural shift that has affected politics, journalism, media, and elsewhere in the arts. In 2018, the worst-case scenario will be if Hollywood thinks it’s identified and expelled some ‘bad apples,’ pats itself on the back, and moves on without any fundamental change to power structures that have silenced victims and enabled predators. The best-case scenario will be if that structural change happens, and Hollywood takes the lead on challenging and rethinking a toxic masculinity of entitlement that’s come to define manhood the world over and permeates nearly every aspect of our lives.”

Best Undistributed Film: None
“We only get distributed films out here in the provinces.”

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Dawson City: Frozen Time

Best Animated Feature: N/A

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Call Me by Your Name
“Wrong is not the way I would have phrased this, but it’s certainly the film where my opinion diverged most from the consensus. It felt like a series of surfaces that revealed nothing, in a narrative about the inner lives of the characters depicted. This is nowhere near as thorough an explication as this idea deserves, but I desperately want to see the version of this script James Ivory would have directed himself.”

Paul Thomas Anderson, Phantom Thread
David Lowery, A Ghost Story
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Screenplay: The Square

Best Undistributed Film: Mrs. Hyde
“I was kept plenty busy in 2017 by distributed films. I’m probably not the highest authority on this one.”

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Faces Places

Best Animated Feature:The LEGO Batman Movie

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:The Post
“Folks, it’s bad. And my issues go beyond the continued objection from Bridge of Spies that Spielberg is too sentimental about America, a place undeserving of his Capra-corny reverence. It just feels rushed and unlabored-over, which we know it was. From the goofy Nixon bits (on two separate occasions, friends have compared it to Seinfeld’s winking depiction of George Steinbrenner) to the costume-closet wigs and clothes to a literally and figuratively phoned-in performance by Meryl Streep to that mortifying final scene — what is everyone else seeing?”

Best Repertory Series: “Erotic City” at Quad Cinema
“Watching their beat-up prints of beat-off movies was a pleasure once the sweaty discomfort started to yield. Nothing quite like sitting down for a 3 p.m. screening of The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann with four elderly male strangers who all arrived independently, one determined-looking middle-aged woman clutching a notepad, and a friend who insisted on sitting across the aisle and several rows ahead. Was anyone masturbating? Who knows! New York City is back, baby!”

Most Significant Development: The Great Sexual Misconduct Deluge
“While all the hot air spewed about ‘draining the swamp’ in Washington amounted to little more than a larger and more radioactively polluted swamp, the public could actually feel the filth getting flushed out of Hollywood. Power players once cowered before as infallible faced consequences for blithe sprees of harassment and rape, though satisfaction remains in a sad short supply. No jail time to speak of, damage that can’t be reversed, work yet to be done. But we’ve made several steps in a positive direction. Things are changing.”

Best Undistributed Film: Spoor
“It’s very difficult to know what film is or is not going to be distributed; there are now many avenues in terms of ‘exhibition,’ many different platforms, and films seem to pop up all over.”

Best Repertory Series: “The Non-Actor” at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
“That series as well as the current “Emotion Pictures” (on film melodrama) are prime examples of imaginative programming, which also help to illuminate the individual movies by providing an imaginative context; there were also excellent series at the Quad, the Metrograph, as well as the Museum of the Moving Image and the Museum of Modern Art.”

Most Significant Development: That film continues
“There are so many reasons why ‘film’ as an art seems to be endangered, both internally (the movie industry seems so obsessed with tentpoles) and externally (the possible restrictions of increasingly totalitarian regimes), yet there were always ‘personal’ films which seemed to strike a chord.”

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Nocturama
“Look, I don’t want to get into it. OK?”

Best Repertory Series: Henry Hathaway and Robert N. Bradbury
“Two craftsmen of the 1930s western. One went on to greater glory, while the other groomed John Wayne for inevitable stardom. I’m very glad to have made, or furthered, my acquaintance with their work.”

My Little Pony: The MovieBrigsby BearKediManifestoDawson City: Frozen TimeThe Happiest Day in the Life of Olli MäkiThe Disaster ArtistWe Are the FleshHarold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love StoryLost in Paris

Best Undistributed Film: A Gentle Creature
“Suggestion for those who’ve dismissed [Sergei] Loznitsa’s latest as sledgehammer miserabilism: Watch it again and take note of how frequently the gentle creature is gently removed from the frame. Even the film’s most horrific moment turns out to be canny misdirection.”

Best First Feature: The Challenge

Best Documentary: Wormwood

Best Animated Feature:Coco

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Twin Peaks: The Return
“This was a season of television, not a film.”

Best Repertory Series:Twin Peaks, seasons one and two (on Amazon Prime at my house)
“Oh, wait, those are two seasons of television. You were talking about the world of cinema, presumably. Never mind.”

Most Significant Development: People designating television seasons and/or episodes as films (when they have not been released as films).
“Stop doing that. Otherwise taxonomical chaos will ensue.”

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Blade Runner 2049
“My experience of this film was reading men writing rapturously about how groundbreaking it was and talking to other women who had found its sexism unbearable. No film this year more clearly illustrated for me the massive gender imbalance in film criticism. (Also…I don’t even think it’s that aesthetically pleasing!)”

Best Repertory Series: “Jane Campion’s Own Stories,” the Film Society of Lincoln Center

“I was lucky enough to watch almost all of Jane Campion’s films at the Film Society of Lincoln Center this fall. Campion is one of my favorite filmmakers, and spending a couple of weeks in her universe is something we could all use this year.”

Most Significant Development: The floodgates open
“I am skeptical about how much long-term change will result from our current cultural moment. But there is no denying that the biggest entertainment story of the year has been the public reckoning with sexual misconduct in Hollywood. How this discussion will trickle down remains to be seen, as does the long-term fate of the men who have, as of now, been excommunicated from public life. (Louis C.K. is coming back.) And the focus on sexual misconduct specifically will no doubt allow many vicious tyrants whose abuse does not take the form of sexual torment to escape public scrutiny. It is painful to realize, as I did years ago, that the thing you love best in the world is fundamentally toxic. How many women suffered to make every film you love? How many PAs were casually slapped on the ass, groped, assaulted, raped? If it were possible to do that math we would probably have to give up movies altogether. Instead we will simply have to do what we can to make the movies better.”

Best Undistributed Film: The Rider
“It’s bizarre to me that Sony Pictures Classics is holding this treasure all the way till April 2018, considering that it’s been winning major festival awards since Cannes last year. Here’s hoping that allows them to build an audience for this fragile but essential portrait of a Native American rodeo rider.”

Best First Feature: The Rider

Best Documentary: Contemporary Color

Best Animated Feature:Coco

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Bright
“The critics must have a chip on their shoulder for Max Landis, David Ayer, Netflix, or all three of the above, because they dogpiled what for me was the most exciting film the streaming service has released yet, a thrilling taste of what’s possible if visionary storytellers circumvent the system.”

Best Repertory Series: “Jean-Pierre Melville at 100”

Most Significant Development: “The Reckoning” of Harvey Weinstein and other sexual miscreants

Cillian Murphy, Dunkirk
Rebecca Spence, Princess Cyd
Robert Pattinson, The Lost City of Z
Jason Mantzoukas, The House
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project

Best Director:

Christopher Nolan, Dunkirk
Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross, My Happy Family
James Gray, The Lost City of Z

Best Screenplay: Graduation

Best Undistributed Film: Where Is Kyra?

“I hesitate to call My Happy Family as having been ‘distributed’ in any meaningful way by Netflix, so a part of me wants to put that here as well. However, as far as I can tell, Where Is Kyra? still has no U.S. distributor, which is a terrible shame.”

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Starless Dreams

Best Animated Feature:Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:In the Fade

“I’ve already said too much about it, but the film’s embrace of melodrama makes it one of Fatih Akin’s boldest works. Also The House. They’re all wrong about The House.”

Best Repertory Series: The Yuliya Solntseva series at MoMI

“I’m lying because I was out of town for the series; I had to watch the films beforehand so I could write about them. But this was an essential reclamation project, and I can only hope that we in New York and elsewhere get more chances to see these masterful epics on the big screen.”

Most Significant Development: The Weinstein debacle and the ensuing #MeToo movement

“At least in the U.S., it would be hard to come up with a more seismic development for the industry itself.”

Denis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049
Jordan Peele, Get Out
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Screenplay: The Disaster Artist

Best Undistributed Film: N/A

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: I Am Not Your Negro

Best Animated Feature:Coco

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

“I’ll be the first to admit that there were some big swings and misses made in the casting department on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, but the beauty of its visuals and the ballsiness of its ambition deserve a lot more credit than most critics offered. It’s off to a rough start in pop culture, but I hope that it ultimately ages like Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The development of the horror genre

“Genre fans are typically used to maybe one or two legitimately great horror films every year, but 2017 saw a major uptick in those numbers. This was reflected at the box office as well, and could start seeing studios investing more in scares from talented filmmakers.”

“A trenchant commentary on the misery of being an undocumented immigrant, it managed to synthesize Ken Loach, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Jia Zhang-ke, and everyone I know who saw it at the New York Asian Film Festival thought it was the festival’s find this year. But it may be too bleak to get U.S. distribution, even if it’s topical in an American context.”

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Wormwood

Best Animated Feature:In This Corner of the World

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Call Me by Your Name

“This film makes so many compromises to reach a “mainstream” (read: heterosexual and relatively socially conservative) audience. It leaves both gay sexuality and identity off-screen, letting the camera float out the window when Elio and Oliver fuck. Aesthetically, it offers such a tourist’s-eye-view of Italy that no one would guess it was made by an actual Italian without Luca Guadagnino’s name on the credits.”

Best Repertory Series: Anthology Film Archives’ Alan Clarke series.

Most Significant Development: Obviously, the revelation of the extent of sexual abuse in the film industry.

“I have repeatedly tried to write about this, but it went from shock to cliche in about two weeks. There has been some excellent writing inspired by the #MeToo campaign and critics, mostly women, coming to terms with their now-tainted appreciation of Woody Allen and Louis C.K., but if I read one more “review” of Wonder Wheel that spends 600 words calling Allen a pedophile, you will be able to hear my scream in New Jersey.”

“Mrs. Fang, by Wang Bing, would have made my top ten (top 5 actually), had it been streamed “in the U.S.” (it streamed on the Arte website with many different language subtitles). The internet being a fairly international resource this qualifies for my own personal list (upon which I apply similar rigors), but I feel it may be a stretch for this one. I substituted Your Name, which I put on last year’s list for its Los Angeles run, because I’ve seen it receive more consideration this year and I did not vote in last year’s poll. I Love You, Daddy, I feel, will have its reputation rehabilitated with time along with its apologetic creator. Being the object-focused viewer I am I think it deserves a place along its 2017 brethren, especially being so of the moment for reasons both good and bad. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, my clear #11, will fill in admirably on my list proper though.”

Best First Feature: Sleep Has Her House

Best Documentary: The Human Surge

Best Animated Feature:Your Name

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

“I’m so deeply in love with Anderson’s work that at this point I can never read any dismissal of it as anything but a myopic adherence to the aesthetic heritage of elitism. It goes beyond groupthink, it’s the tradition of “quality cinema” itself. The man is a genius of form and is more thoughtful and soul-bearing about his own work than any more traditionally reflexive filmmaker. This film shook me to my core.”

Best Repertory Series:A Christmas Story

“Not sure this qualifies as a series, and I’m not a huge repertory viewer (sacrilege of the theater experience to say I can watch old stuff at home but it’s true, and cheaper), but I happened to catch this in a theater. While I may not have keyed in on any particularly theatrical elements augmented by the experience, this is now established as one “normie classic” firmly within my sensibilities.”

Most Significant Development: #MeToo

“This topic is talked to death, to the point I feel very uncreative, and unqualified, to add to the chatter but I’m not sure what else I would’ve picked. Even onscreen, so many film artists’ careers will be or have already been ended or suspended, perhaps not undeservingly when squared with the similar impact they had on their victims, be it a blacklisting or a psychological scarring that closed doors or encumbered the will to work in the industry again. While I did love a film that was shelved and even reevaluated (a film very much about these topics, and whose hypocrisy only enriches it in my eyes), not every abusive artist taken down by this wave of bravery is worthwhile, but more important is the opposite: many worthwhile artists have been kept down by these injustices. Will this movement make cinema better as a whole artistically? My usual rubric forecasts a lateral move, but the extratextual justice is not to be downplayed.”

Additional Comments:

“I have not yet seen Phantom Thread. It has the potential for a top ten spot, as do the 7 other films I’ve committed to seeing before I finalize my list, but it is not a foregone conclusion it even places in the top 25. This was a very good year for blockbusters, despite what others will seemingly annually suggest. The most profound emotional experience I’ve ever had in a theater was had this year, at a multiplex, with a “trash franchise” wide release film in seeing it finally come to terms with its series’ place in the art world. My hope for 2018 is that we as a critical body can be more open, rigorous, and honest, as we all always can.”

The Lost City of ZA Cure for WellnessWormwoodThe Shape of WaterCasting JonBenetWorld of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People’s ThoughtsThree Billboards Outside Ebbing, MissouriAfter the StormOkjaLogan

Best Lead Performance:

Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Seo-hyun Ahn, Okja
Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out
Hiroshi Abe, After the Storm
Andy Serkis, War for the Planet of the Apes

James Gray, The Lost City of Z
Errol Morris, Wormwood
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Screenplay: The Shape of Water

Best Undistributed Film: N/A

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Casting JonBenet

Best Animated Feature:The LEGO Batman Movie

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:A Cure for Wellness

“‘Wrong’ may be a strong word, but I’ll take any opportunity I can to stump for Gore Verbinski’s latest film. It’s a Grand Guignol masterpiece, and not enough people managed to see it before it was unceremoniously kicked out of theaters.”

“The Shape of Water is not a love letter to classic monster cinema or a beautiful romance or a touching plea for tolerance. It just looks like those things, because Guillermo Del Toro is a master of images. His movies look so gorgeous that they seem like there must be vast currents of feeling underneath — and obviously for some people there are. But I’ve seen The Shape of Water twice, and I still don’t really know why Sally Hawkins falls in love with the fish-guy, beside that, yes, he’s pretty sexy as fish-guys go. I’m not quite ready to pull a Michael Shannon and demand its dissection — in large part because I think it would be a waste of time. There’s not much there to dissect.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The Disney/Fox deal

“The late-breaking sale of Fox’s movie division to Disney further tightens the vise Disney currently keeps the theatrical distribution business. Of this year’s ten biggest movies, Disney released four, with a fifth happening out of the company’s Spider-Man-sharing largesse. Perhaps more telling, they have but a single title outside the year’s top 20, because they’re not really interested in anything smaller than that. Fox is another big studio, of course, but it puts out comedies, R-rated sci-fi/horror pictures, and enough weird gambles to keep things interesting. I can’t imagine Disney wants to keep making all or even many of those movies going forward, and even if you didn’t take the same pleasure in War for the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Covenant, Logan, Snatched, and A Cure for Wellness that I did, that’s still a shame for a business already struggling to communicate its value outside of the five or six big-ticket movies that come out each year.”

“More so than even Darren Aronofsky’s deepest dive yet into bad self-romance, Yorgos Lanthimos supplied annus-bloody-horribilis 2017 with its ultimate analogue, an unstoppable interruption by everything that must at all costs not be normalized. Non-horror movies that act like horror movies: making cinema great again, again.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The obliteration of formal distinctions in our current cross-distributive morass

“Twin Peaks: The Return was the clear cinematic event of the year, hence it deserves my #1 slot. But it’s not a film, hence it doesn’t deserve any slot. I’m a man of compromise, hence it gets my #10 slot.”

Best Undistributed Film: The Testament
“This is an Israeli film that debuted at the Venice Film Festival in 2017, then bounced around to other festivals. It is opening in some markets in 2018, but thus far no plans for here in the U.S.. (Eventually, I’m sure.) Without getting into it too deeply, I’ll just say: It’s terrific.”

Best First Feature: Raw

Best Documentary: Dawson City: Frozen Time

Best Animated Feature: N/A

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About: I am a man of peace, Village Voice Poll.

Best Repertory Series: Merchant-Ivory at the Quad

Most Significant Development: Weinstein
“My hope is for a domino effect across all industries. So far the winds have change have mostly blown in entertainment and politics, which makes sense, I suppose, since these are highly visible positions. Where are the shamed bosses at, I dunno, General Motors, and every other big corporation? The U.S. Department of Agriculture? Your local Panera Bread? Or a tiny stationary store with a terrorized employee who works the quiet shift? Bosses are bosses no matter where you go, and many of them are abusing their power. This is a fact. Maybe this will change.”

Additional Comments: “”Here’s what you should do in 2018: Once a week this year, watch a movie that was made before the year you were born. Make sure one out of four each month is in a language other than English. (Assuming English is your native tongue, that is.) FilmStruck will help, and FilmStruck is a blessing. But: if you live in New York City, you have no excuse not to see a lot of these IN A THEATER WHERE THEY BELONG. The Quad, MoMA, MoMI, BAM, Anthology, Film Forum, IFC, Metrograph, the Alamo Drafthouse, the French Institute and others are mixing it up for you every single night. Money is tight, I know, but bag your lunch Monday and Tuesday and you’ve earned your Wednesday ticket. (Bring in Junior Mints from Duane Reade.) Movies at home are okay, but it’s really not the same. ”

Best Undistributed Film: The Family I Had
“This was shown on Discovery in December, but deserved a theatrical run. From my Tribeca curtain-raiser on it: “One of the best documentaries in the festival is a worst-case scenario come true. Charity Lee’s son, Paris, murdered her daughter, Ella, her only other child, when he was thirteen and she was just four, a couple of years after we see the chubby blonde toddler celebrating Christmas with her attentive older brother. Other documentaries would center on Paris, but directors Carlye Rubin and Katie Green know the real question: How does Charity move forward?”

Best First Feature: Summer 1993

Best Documentary: Whose Streets?

Best Animated Feature:Coco

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
“Completely offensive, from its sympathetic portrayal of a racist cop, through the demeaning line about “the little boys’ room” it gives to Peter Dinklage, to its dismissive, jokey attitude toward domestic violence and the violent rape and murder of a young woman it just can’t stop giving us all the gory details of. Two of my favorite actors, Frances McDormand and Peter Dinklage are in it: they’re both excellent in it and the film was still fucking terrible.”

Best Repertory Series: NewFest
“We still need queer film festivals!”

Most Significant Development: That (some) predators who committed serial sexual assault and harassment in the industry finally had lasting consequences for their actions.
“Still waiting for Woody Allen and Roman Polanski to experience some of those consequences though!”

Additional Comments: “This was actually a great year for film, but because of theatrical distribution fuckery, even attentive audiences who regularly went to art houses missed out on some of the best films, most egregiously BPM (Beats Per Minute) but also Thelma and Netflix-distributed films like Mudbound and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).

On the Beach at Night AloneA Quiet PassionThe Other Side of HopeLady BirdThe Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)Ex Libris: The New York Public LibraryPersonal ShopperGood TimeBehemothPerson to Person

Hong Sang-soo, On the Beach at Night Alone
Terence Davies, A Quiet Passion
Aki Kaurismäki, The Other Side of Hope

Best Screenplay: A Quiet Passion

Best Undistributed Film: The Day After

Best First Feature: The Lure

Best Documentary: Ex Libris: The New York Public Library

Best Animated Feature:Your Name

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:47 Meters Down

“The Mandy Moore shark movie rules.”

Best Repertory Series: Metrograph’s Rohmer series

“Rep cinema was incredible last year. I couldn’t name or remember them all but Lincoln Center’s International Melodrama and Non-Actors series definitely stand out as do BAM’s Anne-Marie Miéville series, Quad Cinema’s International Musical series, MoMA’s Sci-Fi series, and many more. My best times at the movies were at rep screenings. I attended 217 in 2017.”

“Not in terms of its critical quality, but in terms of how the film was framing its politics and its depiction of the fourth estate. Compared to Spotlight, The Post depicts very little of the journalistic process, and I find it hard to see what people see when they get excited about journalism in the movie. But it deeply dives into the institutional relations that a paper might have to create in order to survive and the compromises at stake. A profoundly reflective film for Spielberg, even if its obviousness sometimes hits too saccharine.”

“A monumental series of 38 films from Hollywood down to Argentina that played in East Los Angeles to the city’s Spanish speaking citizen. Programmed by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with the assistance of numerous archives as part of Los Angeles’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA. Many of the new restorations will be traveling throughout the next year (including to MoMA, and I recommend seeing all of them). A rare series that allows us to rethink the idea of the Hollywood audience.”

Most Significant Development: The Discourse Around Conglomeration

“Obviously, the most startling and horrifying events in the media landscape have been the allegations against powerful men in Hollywood and beyond. But nothing was more depressing than the discourse around the Disney-Fox merger in terms of the synergy of their intellectual property. This merger, alongside the Time Warner-AT&T purchase, have the chance to entirely change the media landscape in unprecedented ways matching the vertical integration of the studio system of the 1930s. The fact that few are willing to bat an eye at such prospects, and in fact welcome via fanbases, suggest that all content is doomed to be devoured through our failing neoliberal discourse.”

“I had SO much unexpected fun with this one until I didn’t. Can’t say more than that. No spoilers. But, if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. I didn’t buy it. And it blew the whole thing for me.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The re-shoot on All The Money in the World

“Not only does this remarkable re-tooling prove anyone is replaceable, but Ridley Scott’s seamless final cut might also make some producers wonder: if that re-shooting and editing could be accomplished on such a tight rein, why ante up mega budgets for non-CGI movies at all?”

Additional Comments:

“I’m thrilled at the depth of the field this year. It was very tough to narrow down not just films for an obligatory Ten Best list (mine was actually 11), but the performances, and technical achievements were also too many to ignore. While some studios delivered some quality tentpole hits, others backed more risky, adventurous productions. It may have been lucky timing, but with the exception of the remarkably potent The Post, the wide range of releases addressing issues and speaking to wide ranging audiences were produced before the 2016 election. As so many were feeling marginalized, it was especially important and wonderful that the year in film was open and embracing.”

Best Repertory Series: Emotion Pictures from Film Society at Lincoln Center

Most Significant Development: The growing threat of Net Neutrality and Disney Purchasing Fox

“These two issues reflect a possible dire situation for cinema’s nationwide where the equality of the internet, which allows viewers to find and watch cinema beyond their multiplex could potentially vanish. Additionally those multiplexes lose the variety offered by Fox because of the Disney purchase. Cinema is shrinking, and viewers who do not live in cinema rich areas are going to suffer.”

“The long overdue outing of creeps will hopefully signal a broader cultural shift away from protecting predators because they help the bottom line.”

Additional Comments: “2017 was a bad year in many regards but the cinema continues to provide us with a vibrant cultural conversation on an array of topics. Oh yeah, and Twin Peaks came back and it was awesome.”

“I totally understand why the very idea of seeing this film right now would make people squeamish. And frankly, a lot of my colleagues who were keenly aware of the then-only-rumors about Louis C.K.’s proclivities weren’t too high on the movie when it played at the Toronto film festival, either. But at TIFF, I found this picture often ungainly but just as often beautiful to look at, and always provocative in ways that I prefer art to be: raising questions, not making assertions.”

“Mainstream movies are officially boring. In 2017 — somehow even worse than in 2016 or 2015 or 2014 — the only films to hit major screens were franchise entries. Variety is the spice of life, and the multiplex is now (more than ever!) an unseasoned bowl of gruel or those slimy bug bars the proles eat in Snowpiercer. I know, the market has spoken, and the ‘adult’ fare that used to fill screens before and after summer blockbuster season moved over to Netflix and Amazon. But I don’t have to like it. Things have gotten so bad I now miss middlebrow biopics and reductive history lessons and vanilla dramas of Hollywood. I hated those films too, and once upon a time I wished they’d go away forever. I now realize I’ve stumbled in my very own version of The Monkey’s Paw: They did go away, but in their place came nothing but interchangeable comic book movies. Bring back blandly inspiring docudramas! Bring back Scott Hicks!”

Additional Comments: “I would put Twin Peaks and Big Little Lies as my top 2 films of the year, but decided to leave them off my ballot because why not. And if I could I’d put Neil Cicirerega’s album Mouth Moods on my top 10 as well.”

Betty Gabriel, Get Out
Willem Dafoe, The Florida Project
Michelle Pfeiffer, mother!
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
Armie Hammer, Call Me by Your Name

Best Director

Jordan Peele, Get Out
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water

Best Screenplay: The Shape of Water

Best Undistributed Film: Anna and the Apocalypse

“A teen-comedy/holiday musical/zombie horror movie that thrilled out of Fantastic Fest, it was an absolute genre-smashing blast with a charismatic cast, giddy gore, and outstanding song numbers.”

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Santoalla

Best Animated Feature:The LEGO Batman Movie

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Monster Trucks.

“Is it great cinema? No. But it was original, fun, and earnest. It made me nostalgic for the heyday of giddily bonkers studio kid-friendly comedies like Encino Man or Surf Ninjas, which embraced their ludicrous premises to give an unapologetically silly and sensational romp. In a time where we often criticize studios for taking zero risks, Monster Trucks deserved better.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The Weinstein Effect

“Harvey Weinstein is no more. And as he went down so too have a slew of other alleged abusers. We’re saying ‘enough’ with a bullying and abusive culture that has too long thrived in Hollywood (and beyond). And we’re already seeing a shift with the reshoots of All the Money In the World, the cancellation of I Love You, Daddy’s release, and more. I’m hopeful these waves will continue to rock the film world, and from it will rise a more inclusive and healthier system that’s nonetheless creative and thrilling. After all, there’s plenty of artists out there who don’t need to bully to be great.”

Additional Comments: “2017 was a sensational year for cinema. The superhero genre got sophisticated with Logan. Monsters danced. Man-eating mermaids sang, and the world fell hard for Wonder Woman, Rey, and an angry misfit who calls herself Lady Bird. Instead of the standard parade of stern biopics for award season, we were gifted foul-mouthed heroines, a peachy gay romance, a dreamy love story where girl meets beast, and a fearless and challenging horror movie. It was a year full of surprises and films so beautiful, moving, and unique that many felt like miracles.”

“Shevaun Mizrahi’s debut — which showed in nearly-complete form at True/False before officially premiering at Locarno — is real-deal sculpting in time, a documentary portrait of an Istanbul retirement bracingly focused on death, life and the collapse of the material, finding an entire portrait of the life cycle in the juxtaposition of a construction site and its home base.”

Best First Feature: 4 Days in France

Best Documentary: Behemoth

Best Animated Feature: N/A

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:The Square

“There are a number of perilously overrated enterprises out there, naming some of which would cause me more problems than others. But the small group that identified The Square as being atrocious are correct. I’m not sure what went wrong here, as I’ve enjoyed all of Ruben Ostlund’s other features (minus his first, still unseen) to date, but this displays the maximum possible gap between undeniable technical facility and actual interest level.”

Best Repertory Series: “Gotta Light?” at Metrograph

“There was, per usual, a lot of outstanding rep programming this year in NYC: Lincoln Center’s series on the non-actor and international melodrama, MoMA’s survey of international sci-fi, the completion of MoMI’s painstaking Scorsese retro. But seeing David Lynch directly lead to a sold-out Ernie Gehr screening? That’s next level.”

Most Significant Development: “N/A. There is no new wave, only the sea, etc.”

Additional Comments: “Please do not send me your angry category fraud comments about Twin Peaks, we’ve done this dance many times already. The ballot said it was OK!”

“I don’t think people are wrong to be unmoved by I, Tonya, or to be exhausted by it, or to be annoyed by its pop-hit Greek chorus, or to find it sometimes clunkily obvious in its technique, or to want to spend less time with Gilooly and his dopey co-conspirators. But I take sincere issue with accusations that the film is cruel to Harding or to her milieu, or that its depiction of abuse is comic or exploitative. Often, abuse in real life is a quick everyday explosion, as it is in Craig Gillespie’s film, which is uncommonly clear-eyed about how cycles of violence replicate themselves.”

Best Repertory Series: Holy Blood: Mexican Horror Cinema at MOMA

Most Significant Development: The exposure of an abusive system’s worst abusers

“… and the increasing public awareness that the proclivities of terrible men are not just a behind-the-scenes concern but are instead much of the reason that so many studio (and major indie) releases are so limited in their thematic reach.”

“Luckily most of the best films of 2017 ended up getting picked up by heroic distributors like Grasshopper, Cinema Guild, Strand, and Kino Lorber. Still in limbo, however, is Teresa Villaverde’s striking, severe Berlin entry Colo. A sort of antipode to Marcel Gomes’s Arabian Nights, this is a film about Portuguese austerity that is itself austere, showing how economic hardship can break down families and even identities. Essential viewing.”

Best First Feature: Get Out

Best Documentary: Strong Island

Best Animated Feature: N/A

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:The Florida Project

“Many of this year’s best films (Dunkirk, Nocturama, BPM, The Beguiled) were about the power of collectivity. That’s sort of how The Florida Project starts out, but it eventually retrenches into a selfish world where families and finally individuals turn on one another, as if to imply that in the last analysis, there’s no helping the feral poor. And, when all else fails, go to Disney World.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: Outing the Harassers

“Hollywood started taking sexual harassment and assault seriously, even going to far as to erase certain individuals from the public eye completely. I shed no tears for them. But let’s not kid ourselves. Taking down a few bad apples won’t in and of itself dismantle structural sexism and racism. This could very well be another self-congratulatory gesture from a pseudo-liberal industry that loves nothing better than patting itself on the back.”

“Less for the whole film, and more for the sense of Gary Oldman being given hosannas for starring in Oscar Bait: The Movie. He’s delivered a dynamite performance in a British thriller about a high-tension era in international politics: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This role is Acting with a capital A. No thanks.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The sure-to-fail “pivot to video” for journalistic organizations

“Too many good writers continue to lose work because the organizations that previously employ them think readers value a visual presentation of journalism over the written word. It impacts film because the fewer good writers working steadily, the fewer good pieces of criticism (no matter how much the studios bray about Rotten Tomatoes damaging their brand-deposit movies).”

“Prefaced by the fallout from the Faraci/Alamo Drafthouse controversy, the reckoning begun by the Weinstein allegations seemed even more of a shake-up to the current power system. There is more to be done, but at least women’s voices are being heard and believed.”

“The best movie in which a guy becomes a vampire by giving God a blowjob ever made.”

Best First Feature: MA

Best Documentary: Kedi

Best Animated Feature:In This Corner of the World

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Call Me by Your Name

“I can only presume it reminded viewers of their own first love, as it’s an otherwise boring slog that doesn’t even film the local beautiful scenery in any interesting way. But thank goodness Michael Stuhlbarg spells out the entire point to us at the end, and Timothée Chalamet stares at the camera for four minutes.”

Best Repertory Series: N/A

Most Significant Development: The ’80s icon as absent father who turns out to be a huge disappointment

“It probably says a lot about those of us who feel we were partly raised by ’80s movies that Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Kurt Russell all played sci-fi father figures who failed. It’s a sign, perhaps, that we are aging out of the demographic for whom mass entertainments are comfort food, and into more challenging corners of art and the world.”

Additional Comments: “I’m genuinely not kidding about Transformers: The Last Knight.”

“Why is this mediocrity appearing on so many Top 10 lists? Between its awkward reconciliation of true-story authenticity and rom-com convention and its crushing indifference as a piece of filmmaking, “The Big Sick” survives only on the appeal of its performers—and just barely at that.”

Karin Konoval, War for the Planet of the Apes
Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
Bella Heathcote, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
Doug Jones, The Shape of Water
Barry Keoghan, The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Best Director

Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Robin Campillo, BPM (Beats Per Minute)
Matt Reeves, War for the Planet of the Apes

Best Screenplay: Lady Bird

Best Undistributed Film: A Skin So Soft

Best First Feature: God’s Own Country

Best Documentary: This Is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous

Best Animated Feature:The Boss Baby

Movie Everyone Was Wrong About:Call Me by Your Name

“The only difference between Call Me by Your Name and the dime a dozen twink led straight to DVD dramedies proliferating in the Gay and Lesbian section on Netflix is that Guadagnino is attached to it.”

Best Repertory Series: Footnotes to Lady Bird at Quad Cinema

“From “Flirting” to “Jeanne Dielman”, Quad was able to show the breadth of Gerwig’s preoccocupations, influences, inspirations, and what I think genuinely fills her with joy.”

Most Significant Development:BPM and Theo and Hugo showing HIV+ people having sex

“Not only did HIV+ people get to have sex, they got to feel sexy doing it. BPM, in particular, understands the political implications of being queer on a molecular level.”

Barry Keoghan, The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Sienna Miller, The Lost City of Z
Richard Jenkins, The Shape of Water
Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Michael Stuhlbarg, Call Me by Your Name

“Filmmaker Iram Haq’s second feature (after “I Am Yours”) is a powerful coming-of-age story centered on the clash between a Norwegian teenage girl and her traditional Pakistani parents. In the lead role, newcomer Maria Mozhdah is a revelation.”

“Not nearly as daring or weird as its concept would have you think. Beautiful visuals and a nice metaphor for falling in love but it felt pretty empty to me. The allegorical aspect felt really clunky, too.”

Best Repertory Series: Ford to City: Drop Dead: New York in the 70s, at Film Forum